Funeral home casket selection rooms have evolved as those in the industry have attempted to better meet the funeral customers' needs. The "traditional" presentation of product in a funeral home selection room was to simply place each casket on a bier and open the head end cap or lid of the casket to permit viewing inside the casket. As many caskets as possible were displayed in a selection room in order to maximize the number of product choices for the customer. Unfortunately, such a "traditional" presentation results in what has been referred to as a "sea of caskets" effect, which can be both distressing or alarming and confusing to the customer.
Advances in the design of funeral home selection rooms have taken the form of providing a plurality of alcove structures, either of a "modular" construction or of a "stick built" construction, in the funeral home selection room. Each alcove structure includes a vertical back wall and a pair of vertical, spaced apart wing walls cooperating with the back wall to form an alcove. A soffit may span the upper front edges of the wing walls, and lighting, for example track lighting, may be incorporated into the soffit. A two-tiered casket rack is located within the alcove, the lower tier of the casket rack being a roll out rack permitting the lower casket to be rolled out from under the upper casket and the casket lid opened for display of the lower casket. Tasteful signage and the like is mounted on the back wall above the caskets. Such a construction, which is the subject of the assignee's prior U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,405,017 and 5,524,394, both increases the number of caskets which can be displayed in a funeral home selection room, as well as greatly improves the "look and feel" of the casket presentations, reducing the clutter and confusion of the so-called "sea of caskets" effect and providing a feeling of comfort to the families. U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,405,017 and 5,524,394 are hereby incorporated by reference herein at this point as if fully set forth in their entirety.
New construction and renovation costs being what they are, there is an ever-increasing need to provide more economical casket display structures. In particular, there is a need to provide economical casket display structures which permit a high product density to be displayed in a funeral home selection room, yet which do not sacrifice the convenience and look and feel of the casket display systems of U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,405,017 and 5,524,394. Further, there is a need to provide such casket display structures which may be quickly assembled and moved to arrange in the first instance, or to rearrange, a selection room.